Verizon Adds Smarts to Digital Media Services

Verizon is layering a new platform on top of its content delivery network and video processing services. The telco today is announcing the new Verizon Media Xperience Studio, a platform for over-the-top video providers that it calls a first-of-its-kind content intelligence system.

The Media Xperience Studio combines a traditional content management system with functionality for end-to-end tracking of digital assets, management of video playout and app creation. It's content and service management all rolled into one, with a large dose of data added to the mix for product optimization.

She adds, "The amount of information we're capturing and putting into our system and then allowing the customer to see it, make intelligent decisions and create customized programming easily inside a single system -- that's a big innovation. That's the big step forward for us."

The Media Xperience Studio fits with the existing services in the VDMS portfolio. At the network layer, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) has the content delivery network service it acquired from Edgecast way back in 2013. The next layer up is video processing, or all of the functions that go into preparing content for delivery.

Media Xperience Studio sits on top as the final layer, providing visibility into the lifespan of every content asset all the way from production through to consumption.

Verizon uses the concept of a "single source of truth" with the Xperience Studio. Every digital asset is tagged and tracked, and content owners are given the opportunity to adapt and improve how those assets are presented to customers at every step along the production and distribution path.

There are seven components to the Media Xperience Studio:

MX: Orchestration -- the master data record used to monitor content through production

MX: Apps -- a tool for customized app development

MX: Subscriptions -- a system for powering billing services and managing content entitlements

As for how Verizon plans to sell its new platform, many of the composite technologies are already in place with customers today in one form or another. The telco, for example, started testing customized virtual linear channels at least as far back as 2015. (See Verizon Builds Toward OTT Launch .)

And the components of Xperience Media Studio have largely if not entirely been honed through use in Verizon's own products. Case in point, the Subscriptions module powers NBA League Pass on Verizon's Go90 service.

Evans says that Xperience Media Studio will become part of the backend for services sold through Verizon's new Exponent wholesale business. (See AT&T, Verizon Want to Wholesale IPTV.)

She believes customers will buy the new system because it solves the visibility problem content providers have today.

"That lack of visibility, where data is difficult to standardize or aggregate, that's a pain that our customers have come to us with," Evans says, "and it's a driving factor in why we built the Media Xperience Studio."

Customers will make the switch to Xperience Studio, she adds, when that lack of visibility becomes a driving factor for their business.

customer service Their customer service has been responsive when I had questions or complaints and have reversed fees a number of times. There are five of us sharing a plan and, when we started out, Verizon was the only carrier that would carry five phones. Verizon has the best coverage and that is why I have stuck with top essay writing. The variable cost of the plan is maddening.

Re: Part of Verizon's B2B push Yes, it will be interesting to see how far Verizon can move along that path and business plan. They certainly seem to be headed for the media as message journey which seems to be a good plan for the near future is my guess.

Part of Verizon's B2B push VDMS is a bright spot in Verizon's B2B push. I do wonder about the future of the company's larger portfolio of enterprise services, however. Verizon seems committed to the media sector; far less so to enterprise IT.